Page 73 of Dirty Roulette
“She won’t stop puking! I can’t pick her up. She’s covered in... she’s covered in it.”
“Okay, Okay. I’m on my way. I’m maybe ten minutes from there.”
“Please hurry!” She sobs.
“Push her so she is lying on her side. If she’s not on her side, she can suffocate.”
“Okay... Okay.” There is a thump as if she dropped the phone to the floor.
“I don’t know what to do! Mom! Please, Mom, wake up!” Her voice is further away.
“Keep her on her side. I’ll be right there!”
Payton furrows her brows. The worry is clear on her face. “What’s wrong?!” she asks.
I can’t formulate any words. My heart muffles Payton’s mouth moving. She leans over, her eyes scanning me with worry. I shift the gears into reverse, peeling out of the drive-in theater and the bag of popcorn goes flying to the floor mat. Dust kicks up underneath the tires and I speed off. I’m ignoring every red light.
Payton presses a palm on the ceiling as I weave in and out of traffic, cussing at anyone with breaking lights.
“What’s going on?” Payton asks and each sharp turn sends her throttling from one side to the other.
“Come on!” Someone slams on their brakes for no good reason. I flip on the blinker, cutting past them. My palm lies on the horn. “MOVE!” I’m drenched in sweat, my head heavy.
“Talk to me!” Payton hollers at me. The thing I call a heart thrashes as I swerve around people driving slowly, and hightail it when a light changes to yellow.
“It’s my mom!”
I peel into the driveway and don’t bother to turn off the Jeep. I throw the seatbelt off and run to the front door, hanging wide open. Charlie is on her knees, combing Mom’s hair back with mascara pooling down her cheeks.
“Sebastian!” Charlie uses my first name, and she’s legit a mess – her fingers soaked in vomit and drool. “I’m sorry... I dunno what happened... I just answered her phone call... all I did was answer it!” She heaves in a sob.
A wrenching gurgle climbs out of mom’s throat and vomit pours out of her mouth. She’s choking on it.
“Mom, no, you’re not doing this to me.” I pat her on the cheek, her eyes fluttering open and her pupils are pinpoint falling back into nothingness. “Mom!” I pull her up to a sitting position, and she gags with vomit running down her chin. “Mom, wake up.” She’s pale, cold, and clammy, her breathing shallow.
I pick her up, throwing her arm over my shoulder. Mom mumbles, but I can’t make out the words. Her head swirls around like an unstable spring with too much weight on the top. When I kick the bathroom door open, I see it on the floor. The empty orange pill bottle with the blue lid underneath the groove of the bathroom sink.
“No... no... no! Charlie!”
When I get her to sit on the tile floor, I throw up the toilet seat. I have no idea what to do. They don’t teach this to you in high school,or college, or anywhere. If she devoured an entire bottle of medication, all I can come up with is I need her entire stomach drained. I jam two fingers into the back of her throat until she hurls straight into the bowl.
Payton stands in the doorway wrapped in my football jacket, sitting above her bony knees. A hand comes up to her mouth. The most painful expression I’ve ever seen manifests in her eyes. The fear carves scars right into my skin. It’s crawling up from my chest to my throat. I don’t cry, I don’t shed tears, I’m swallowing the saliva saturating my mouth.
She stands there like a statue, staring at me through the mirror.
“I... I don’t want you to see this,” I manage to say. “Get someone on the phone, please!”
“Okay, I’m sorry... I’m sorry.” She scurries off.
Mom lays an arm around the seat of the toilet. Snatching the pill bottle, I read the cracked and faded label. It’s an old oxycodone prescription and it might be expired. I pull out my cell, typing it into the search engine about overdosing, and all it gives me is the poison control hotline. Knowing Mom, she will shut down even more the second I dial a crisis call center with a person on the other end pretending to give a damn about a stranger having a mental breakdown. I keep typing in other keywords until the one I need comes up. Naloxone. I’ve seen the pink box before. Dad was paranoid about overdosing. He hated this shit, but my brain is beyond a blur. I can't think of where it could be.
“Charlie!” I shout and pry open the bathroom cabinets, throwing out boxes of bandages, a brown bottle of peroxide, Tylenol bottles. What I need isn’t there. “Charlie!” I shout again. Footsteps come pounding down the hallway and Charlie rushes over, digging her nails into the doorframe, with Payton behind with a phone wedge against her ears.
“I need Naloxone. I think there might be a box in her bathroom. I think Dad bought a box.”
Charlie flutters her eyes, visibly swallowing hard. “You need what?”
“Naloxone! The shot, the nasal spray, do you know what that is?” She stands there still like deer in headlights. “Do you? It’s in a pink box.”
